There is a counter bar at the bottom during the Atlantis pulls. Doesn’t matter 10x or 1 at a time or 30x at a time. It all adds up. 30x gives you most return per gem.
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Those who have start more then 1 year after me as already catch me and even surpass me by far using only money.
I don’t really see the problem.
If you are Free To Play you would be doing very very well if you make your first 5* pull and Max it before 10 months. I took about 12 months.
If you grind hard you can reach diamond raid level after a year+ (like me) (but you may not be able to maintain a defence team in that zone)
All the best! Perseverance is the key
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If you want to drop money it wobt take 5 months to be on top 100.
I knew a player who did it in 4 months and his team power is 4100 now when I am still 3400 after very long time of playing as f2p. (Free to play)
Money resolve time.
That makes a lot of sense. Troops are used with every hero, so upgrading them increases damage every time a match is made, irrespective of the hero used.
Excellent point now that I think about it. Maybe I will divert some effort towards that. Would you advice slowing the race to TC20 and improving Barracks, or should I do that after TC20 is up and running?
Thank you @Elpis, @FrenziedEye, and @Jedon. Your experience helps me decide better. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on any game, but reading the comments, spending it on VIP or special summons should work out best. Rest I guess I have to grind it out. Actually, that’s the sign of a good game 
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Don’t think this is very clear in the game, atleast not for people new to this game. Thanks for clarifying that.
I think I’ve repeated this a few times before (apologies for being a broken record to those who have read this before) but I actually quit this game for two weeks because I was demoralised. It’d been half a year and I couldn’t pull a healer.
Then I logged on and somehow I pulled Kiril from TC13 and the rest is history
Now I have all the vanilla healers 
. Healers are probably the most important aspect of this game actually. We can talk about snipers and damage but nothing beats a good heal in a challenging event!
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9 months in until I was able to reach top 100 in raids. a month after that top 10. Not a huge spender, though I did spend more than usual in December.
Could have reached top 100 sooner, but took a long detour to develop my bench for way.
So its doable. The caveat is I have been luckier than most in my summons - but I have seen people who have had even better luck.
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Fair to say you were ‘healed’ back into the game ? 
I have a couple of 3* healers who get one-shotted generally, so I don’t yet appreciate how useful healing is. My current strategy is to kill everything as fast as I can Maybe once I get Kiril or some other good healer, I will truly realise the worth of your comment. Till then, will keep it at the back of my mind.
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Thank you for sharing that. As you can probably guess my current game rank is in 7 digits. So, even if I can reach top 1000 or so in a few months, I would think it a good result (top 100 looks way far off at the moment). The fact you did it without spending much gives me more hope.
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Big spenders burn out and walk away.
Longer-term enjoyment comes from accepting the grind, embracing the community and building relationships.
Yes there is a pay-to-win aspect, but I think it allows you to burn hot at first then burn out / quit. Fixtures like Anchor and Zero would have quit long ago if they didn’t have youtube followings and throw themselves full-bore into the game.
@rook is a shining example of long-term fun but not play-to-win. (I know you don’t know me, but I’ve read the forum for over a year without joining until recently.)
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set yourself a small budget, purchase gems only when u see good specials, especially ones with ascension Matt’s included, and understand it will take time.
finding a good alliance will curve your learning for you and also speed up your progress as to learning which heroes suit your playstyle as to not easy items on certain heroes early.
you will need a bench of at least 30 players to participate in all aspects of the game from events to alliance wars. it’s a very fun game and challenges the brain in different ways for different people. learn to take the good with the bad, you may get said hero or you may get a lot of "feeders to speed up the leveling of other heroes you are using.
… there is no such thing [as pay to win] only pay to speed up progess.
welcome and hope you enjoy the game as much as the rest of us
Edited by Rook
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I would slow the race and improve your barracks at least a bit before you get tc20 up and running. I’ve been playing for almost 5 months and am just now getting my tc researched. (It takes 7 days and 1313000 food in order to do so.) You’ll need all 5 of your iron storages to level 18 to get to sh20. I have my barracks at level 4 currently. It lets me have my 4* troops at level 6 max.
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Reminder to follow Forum Rules. Name calling and finger pointing (however slight) is beneath us all.
Carry on!
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I would think top 10,000 in 6 months would be a tremendous accomplishment. Your first thoughts about the difficulty of catching up to long term players were correct, but this SG-owned forum presents a rosy version of what is essentially a boring P2W game (your less-than-a-few-hundred-bucks will get you farther than free play, but is not enough to get you to the top fast).
But do play the game for the chat/community, by all means.
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Well, if I’d have to start all over again I’d definately would race for SH20 (but I’m an “Game starts at max level…” enthusiast^^), especially if you have two building slots.
Problem with TC20, if you go straight for it: You can’t start pumping out 5* heroes, because you need to level up as well housing (to store 100 pop) and farms/storage space (300k). Racing for SH20 has the advantage that you have to level up mines and iron storage for it, so that you have a huge iron overflow when hitting SH20, because… after SH20 you don’t really need that much for anything anymore and I got more iron than I could spend (with 1 build order).
So that went after SH20 straight to leveling up houses, farms and TCs to keep the TCs (TC 1, 2, 4, 11, 19 for fodder, TC13, 20 for 4* + 5* heroes) spamming heroes. I always got 1 TC to the max - and 3 producing. You don’t need 4 TC20, but as said before… iron overflow.^^
Other buildings I started improving when I needed them (e. g. troops maxed out on lvl X). But that’s another long story… There are some nice guides on the forum how to get asap to SH20 / TC20 if that’s maybe your way of playing the game.
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I agree with this. SH20 and TC20 is a must for F2P/C2P. SH20 also gets you an additional TC. But I would make sure you also increase your food and recruit storage as well on the way. At least high enough to cover the cost to research TC20 and for the 100 recruits you will need to start your first training.
TC11 comes in handy for making food for your heroes. If you haven’t researched it yet. You could work on your food and recruit storage while the research is going. As research doesn’t tie up a builder. There is a guide on which TCs to level. You really only use 1,2,11,19 and 20 the most once all is said and done. So you can save food by skipping some of the research levels unless you feel you will benefit from them.
==Hero XP==
This.
Without duplicate 3*/ 4*/ 5* heroes from massive amounts of gem summons, you can generally expect to level four rainbow 4* 3.60 teams and two rainbow 4* 4.70 teams per year ( total of thirty heroes ).
==Rainbow 5* 2.60 team==
I have been playing for 12 months and I still don’t have a decent rainbow 5* 2.60 team. RNG.
But I do have an excellent selection of 4* 1.1, 4* 3.60 and 4* 4.70 heroes. The backbone of Empires is 4* heroes.
==Healers rock==
This.
I wish Legendary training had more than one 5* Healer.
Green 4* Melendor and purple 4* Rigard compliment each other so well, especially because they are different colors.
==Barracks versus Legendary training==
3* lvl 1 troops and 4* lvl 1 troops are powerful without leveling them.
I would highly recommend getting Legendary training as soon as possible. Followed by at least a second Training camp level 19 and two training camp level 11.
4* Heroes are the backbone of Empires. Legendary training gives you a 4* hero, on average, every ten days.
Extra fast training, is the most Hero XP per hour in the game, except for gem summons.
Extra low cost training is the most Hero XP per recruit in the game. But it is slow so you need to run multiple camps with Extra low cost training.
Troops take up no space, so when you get all the training camps you need and build your Barracks, you will have a ton of troops to level your best 3* and 4* troops.
Nine Level 20 farms and a level 20 watchtower help a lot with troops since they take insane amounts of food to level.
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Great advice @DoctorStrange. I am in an alliance that is currently defeating 6* titans and seems quite helpful to new players. Lots to learn from them. They have also mentioned about 30 heroes for war, which is what I started focussing on, realised the effort required - that’s when this initial question popped up. Thanks for adding your thoughts.
Wise words… i will try my best to keep this in mind throughout the process. Thank you.
Edit: a word
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